Hurricane Frances Update

Hurricane Frances has turned into a real cliffhanger, like a 13-inning 7th game of a World Series or the 2000 Presidential election. It has even been a little weird. The Global Forecasting System (GFS) showed the storm coming into Brunswick, Georgia, or thereabouts, continuing to the northwest, and then splitting up into two storms! One of them heads for Kentucky and Ohio, west of the Appalachians, and the other goes east of the Appalachians, into western Virginia. In Richmond, it gives us a glancing blow, much like Hugo did. The storm reunites somewhere in the Great Lakes.

The hurricane has stayed on a westerly course, with the longitude increasing about 3-4 times as fast as the latitude, and south of the course predicted by the National Hurricane Center. That course was going to go to Jacksonville, FL, but then it moved to Daytona Beach, and then to the Kennedy Space Center, and now back more towards Daytona again. However, the GFS and GFDL models have indicated all day long a hit at Hardeeville, SC, and then a track to the north northeast towards Richmond. Of course I don't want this to happen. I am not too concerned about the wind, since the NHC reports indicate that although the storm is producing140 mph winds, they quickly go down to about 80 mph at 60 miles inland and 12 hours all the way down to 30 mph. But it would throw about 2-10 inches of rain here in Richmond, and we already had 4-14 inches from upstart Gaston, which was "only" a measly little tropical storm.

Now tonight the GFS and GFDL has been joined by all of the BAM models, including BAM-H and BAM-G, so now the computer models graph on Weather Underground looks like a split, with some models heading to the Kennedy Space Center and some heading towards Savannah, GA and Hardeeville, SC. This is making this storm a cliffhanger. Which way is it going to go? Will it follow GFS, or will it follow UKMET, which up to now has been pretty steady? I of course hope that the UKMET and NOGAPS are right. I imagine that the people in Florida hope that GFS is right. We will have to watch the high and the storm really closely the next few days. The people from Fort Pierce to Jacksonville, FL need to keep a close eye on the storm, and so do the people near the Carolina and Virginia coasts. The next two days will tell the story.